Midtown Kingston and the Broadway corridor, with its scruffy barbershops, check-cashing emporiums and storefront churches, has been the subject of countless planning studies for an image-improving update, but maybe what it really needs is a good laugh. In applying for the new culture-and-economic-development grant available from the New York State Council of the Arts, Chris Silva had to think up something compelling, and the idea of a massive comedyfest for the city, centered in Midtown, with the Ulster Performing Arts Center (UPAC) theater, which he manages, turned into a massive gallery of humorist art, seemed as good as any to jumpstart the local economy. After he got the grant (it includes three other festivals, held in Kingston and Poughkeepsie), the notion for “Serious Laughs: Art/Politics/Humor” gained traction when by pure chance he reconnected with a colleague and friend from a former life who just happened to live three blocks from the theater and had the contacts and professional wherewithal to put on an event that promises to be hip, outrageous and yes, actually funny, with dark and in some cases overtly political undertones reflecting on the American dystopia.